Or should that be pick the worst of the worst? Good question because after holing up at Gower Gulch, eating cans of beans, drinking lots of black coffee, and mopping their brows with red bandanas, The DBA Team and Tim Ford have finally drawn up a shortlist.

The shortlist for the Best of the Worst DBA Team Christmas Special.

They asked for stories from the real world of disaster, mayhem, and madness involving databases. Stories from which they could pick the best to feature in in this year’s final instalment of The DBA Team’s unmissable adventures.

And Steve, Grant and Tim were impressed and thankful for every entry that arrived by post, by pony express, and via email.

Five finalists have been chosen, each of whom have told stories that express a mixture of bad luck, bad judgment, or bad choices. Sometimes all three. And all so potentially exciting that they’re good enough to be the center-piece of a plot involving Steve Jones, Grant Fritchey, a car chase or two, and some badly dressed goons wearing sunglasses.

But The DBA Team and Tim Ford need your help in making the final decision because they’re now arguing among themselves about which of the following finalists should win:

Finalist 1: “Your number’s up” – a strange tale involving 1.8 million rows of a database being updated … with the same phone number. Who you gonna call?

Finalist 2: “Slow on the uptake” – a weird adventure in which a database needs a 10 Gb update over a DSL modem. This could take some time.

Finalist 3: “Finger on the trigger” – an intriguing story about a database using triggers to maintain integrity instead of using referential integrity. And please, don’t let Grant know what their backup was.

Finalist 4: “Someone get me a doctor!” – a fast-paced adventure from an un-named hospital where the mission-critical database goes down and the DBA has one hour before patients start to suffer.

Finalist 5: “Disaster zone” – a true-life, modern calamity involving a disaster recovery exercise which successfully managed to cause a disaster of its own.

So it’s over to you. Which of these fine capers do you think is exciting enough to feature as a year-ending DBA Team escapade? The DBA Team need to know by 7th November so that they can hide themselves away and actually write the adventure.

So visit them online and place your vote on the best worst day.